Mountains - Friend (Live At A Riverside)
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- Опубліковано 28 вер 2024
- A stripped down live version of 'Friend' from our next album 'Old Friends'. Get it here: mountainssk.ba...
Friend is from our second album 'Old Friends'.
www.mountainssk.bandcamp.com
Sounds great 👍 love the orange mini
It's a lovely little amp for a riverside ditty...
great music man 🤝
Thank you very much!
Only losers play with tiny amps in the middle of a river
Don't know about you, I'm a winner baby...
Randomly got this recommended at 200 views while scrolling through youtube. Checked out a few songs from the album on bandcamp, because there's a lot of potential and interesting ideas here. The other day I was talking with my bassist about how so many cool bands and musicians end up forgotten or ignored. Sometimes they missed one step or two to really set themselves apart; sometimes the world is simply unfair... and we end up with rather uninteresting and mediocre acts taking the spotlight instead. The rest of this comment may really sound pretentious or whatever, but if there's even the slightest chance that it can spark something to help you make it one step further, I think it's worth the risk. Here are my opinions and criticism:
For the whole band: work more on the textures and dynamics for each song part! Good compositions are able to make each part feel like something is changing, not just in content, but also in color. This second change / break in Friend really achieves this by changing the texture on bass, guitar and drums, and also the content (which also changes in many ways: rhythmically, stylistically and in tempo). In most other changes I've heard on your songs, there's only a change in melody/main chords, but the other parts are a bit lacking and it makes the changes have less impact and "color progression" than they could, making some songs get a bit monotonous despite the *many* great ideas they contain (which are also quite tight thematically, unlike the random explorations that can be heard from other bands that try to get "too interesting").
For each instrument to contribute to this, I'd say the bass always follows the guitar too closely. Do not be afraid to explore your own rhythms and space and harmonic variations! Diverging slightly can give more color to the songs and make the eventual reconvergence even more gratifying! You already have good control over what you usually do, try to explore a bit beyond this comfort zone! For the guitar... the guitar work is fairly excellent, so I'd only suggest considering some pedals, as even a subtle chorus or reverb can help change the mood in gentle ways that could contribute to improving the textures. Sometimes it's simply changing the perceived space you are playing in, sometimes even just the EQ and volume can change that. Though I wouldn't be surprised if not using effects is an intentional choice (but then I remember how most effects on led zeppelin guitars are just using different amps and tones, and how far can that go). I could also recommend taking inspiration from classical music for creating additional wrinkles and variations in the music, or to repetitions of the same parts, which sometimes can inspire variations in other instruments too. Classical composers are often boring from the modern point of view, like, aah, they take so long to come up with a new interesting section..!. but when you look closer at their work, you can see how they can create a hundred variations from an initial melody or pattern and really explore the musical space around it. I love how Mephisto Waltz No. 1 from Liszt evolves in this sense, for example. May inspire something. For the drummer, I love your unique style with the snare. I was thinking a second snare with a different-enough sound could be really interesting to open up the palette. I also think you have the most power to bring the band to the next level. Putting more emphasis on marking the transitions between song parts seems very doable. Maybe be willing to take a step back sometimes to give some parts more room to breathe. Sometimes it feels as if you are trying to make it more interesting for yourself than serving what a song part may need (it's understandable, though, when you are skilled enough to actually make your own parts that fun to play). In my opinion, the production doesn't help a lot, with excessive compression on both snare and bass drum, and the cymbals falling too to the background, but that's another story. I think a good exercise is to actively try to come up with 2 or 3 drum lines for each song part, deliberately trying to go for different moods and styles. I think you could really find interesting alternatives like that and better contribute to the textures and dynamics of the songs. Finally, for the voice, I kinda like more the old recordings and this live recording than the production of the new album, where it's more casual and imperfect and raw. I'd still consider some effects in production to change things up from time to time, but in general I'd rather do less production here, not more. The choruses with multiple voices are great though, keep that up!
I hope none of this rubs you the wrong way, I bothered writing all this because I really think you guys are only a couple steps away from something not just cool and interesting, but also really solid. Sorry that I only put time on "the negatives". I'll definitely try to come back and listen again!
Mmm 🤔